Chris Lombardi puts defense and security under the spotlight, as he shares his takes on recent NATO and EU cooperation and provides insight into the company’s own long-term strategic partnerships in Europe.

Three trends are currently driving the global electricity sector: decarbonization, decentralization and differentiation. Utilities are making significant contributions to mitigate carbon emissions, while a technology revolution is …

The horror of European protectionism

GAZ de France’s impending buyout of Suez (which controls much of Belgium’s energy sector) is seen in most papers as a protectionist power-play by Paris to thwart Italian company Enel’s bid to take over the company.

This is more than just a typical merger-case. It seems to have struck another blow at European integration and soured the single-market spirit. Several publications, both in Europe and abroad, report comments made by Franco Frattini, the justice commissioner, speaking well outside his dossier in an interview with France’s Europe 1 radio.

The controversial merger is “not illegal”, he declared, but it harms the EU’s common market. Italy wants Brussels to intervene in the deal. “It is a blow against the spirit of the European common market,” he said, according to wire reports.

Belgium’s Le Soir is even more blunt in its headline assessment: “France nationalises Belgian electricity”. Its report begins with a funereal tone: “Suez, parent company of Electrabel, to merge with Gaz de France, controlled by the French state. Worries.”

The UK’s Daily Telegraph also reports on the fallout at European level. “Brussels is to take France to the European Court in a move to halt its increasing use of protectionist laws, risking a clash that could divide the European Union,” it writes.

“European Commission legal experts are assembling a case against Paris, targeting a new decree that restricts foreign takeovers in 11 ‘strategic sectors’. Brussels’s patience appears to have snapped after the French government’s orchestration of a merger between the energy groups Suez and Gaz de France.”

The International Herald Tribune notes a delicious irony. “What do French labour unions fear more: privatisation or a hostile takeover bid?” it asks. “An impending offer by the Italian power company Enel for a French rival, Suez, has allowed Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin to kill two birds with one stone: preventing one of France’s biggest private companies from falling into foreign hands by pushing through its merger with Gaz de France and privatising the state-controlled natural gas company in the process.”

Parisian daily Le Monde looks at foreign ownership of the French economy (read: jobs): “Nearly one salaried worker in seven works in France for a foreign company,” it reports, noting that “that proportion has doubled in the last ten years after some 9,000 French companies have been taken under foreign control”.

Finally, speaking of national protectionism, Le Monde also describes (with no small amount of horror) an effort by Flemish politicians to prohibit the use of French names for cities in Flanders, such as Anvers for Antwerpen, or Courtrai for Kortrijk.

“Tourists could no longer visit the canals of Bruges, but of Brugge,” the paper explains. “The letter could not be sent to Gand but to Gent. One would not take the train for Malines but for Mechelen.” The law, according to one politician quoted in the article, is meant to “reinforce the Flemish character of Flanders”.

Perhaps Flanders could return the favour by changing all its motorway signs for Rijsel, which only serve to confuse people trying to get to Lille…